In search of the commons
By Øyvind Holmstad, P2P Foundation Blog
The good thing about losing everything is that it forces you to become flexible and to search for new opportunities.
Medieval Spanish ghost town now self-sufficient ecovillage
By Øyvind Holmstad, P2P Foundation
“It’s a utopian fantasy- discover a ghost town and rebuild it in line with your ideals-, but in Spain where there are nearly 3000 abandoned villages (most dating back to the Middle Ages), some big dreamers have spent the past 3 decades doing just that.
A Zen View Upon the World (Less is More)
By Øyvind Holmstad, Naturkonservativ
Today, at least in Norway, we have too much of everything, and hence we value nothing.
Leon Krier: Architecture in the Age of Austerity
By Øyvind Holmstad, P2P Foundation
This lecture by Leon Krier is one of the most informative I’ve ever watched on the field of architecture, each minute is a flash of insight.
The Ancient Taberna in a Future World
By Øyvind Holmstad, Naturkonservativ
No, the Trajan Market was not at all like today’s ’supermarkets’ — it was a superb market!
The man who started a fire (Christopher Alexander Lecture at Berkeley, California)
By Øyvind Holmstad, Permaliv
As said in the introduction to this lecture held in spring 2011, Christopher Alexander has started a fire that keeps on burning, spread by the "wind" throughout the world. But in the wake of this fire there's no ash, but only beauty and true living structure. As in the new cosmology of Alexander, matter is not inert anymore -- it has spirit, revealed in the field of centers. This means that beauty is seen as a fact of the wholeness found in nature and the universe.
A Multilayered Anti-Pattern
By Øyvind Holmstad, Permaliv
Antipatterns are dysfunctional, wasteful of energy and resources, unsustainable and unhealthy in the long term, and they violate the human scale. Still, they are so seductive in their grand scale, and we are overwhelmed by their appearance and shiny surfaces. In fact, we have even made them our new temples!
Charles Eisenstein on growing “the bright side of the Force”
By Øyvind Holmstad, Permaliv
Charles Eisenstein, the author of Sacred Economics, gave this inspiring talk to Occupy Wall Street, which is actually about growing "the bright side of the force". This Star Wars inspired theme I couple with “the handicap principle“, which has a “bright” and a “dark” side; the selfish and the cooperative. Animals generally use just one of these forces in gathering acceptance and status, while humans are capable to use both or choose one. Or they don’t actually choose, they use the part of the force which is easiest to achieve within the current design of our societies. Unfortunately we have chosen to grow “the dark side of the force”, today growing these evil powers mainly through the ideologies of modernism and capitalism. As a result, community is almost gone.
